Writing :: Working Alone, Together

Spinuzzi, C. (2012). Working alone, together: Coworking as emergent collaborative activity. Journal of Business and Technical Communication 26(4).

Okay, this is the second in my ongoing series on writing publications.  The cite and link above are to the OnlineFirst version of the article, both of which will likely change as the article gets closer to publication. But for now, there they are. If you or your institution have a subscription, please do click through and take a look at it.

Done reading? Let's talk about how I put this thing together. As in the rest of this blog series, here I'll focus on my writing process and choices. The hope is that this "behind the scenes" look will help other scholars to see what went into producing this piece.

The Gist
This article is the result of a research study I started a while back focused on coworking in Austin. Click that link and you'll see a series of blog posts dating back to April 2008. If you have the time and inclination, you can go back to that point and see how my understanding of coworking evolved over time, and in fact you might see parts of these blog posts migrating into the article itself. More on that in a moment.

My analysis was heavily influenced by some of the same issues I discussed in "Losing by Expanding"—in fact, although that piece was published first, it developed from the analytical issues that developed during this and other recent case studies. In a nutshell, the analytical framework I typically use for examining workplace interactions, third-generation activity theory (3GAT), assumes some things that don't hold true in the sort of loosely organized, digitally mediated work that we find in coworking spaces. "Losing by Expanding" articulated that problem and outlines an fourth-generation activity theory (4GAT) approach; "Working Alone, Together" applies that approach.

As you'll see in the article, the 4GAT approach helps us to better understand some of the contradictions we tend to see in coworking spaces.

The Genesis
If you want to know about the exact moment I first heard of coworking, I blogged it. The principals at Conjunctured had just signed a lease for what would become Austin's first coworking space, and Cesar and John Erik were kind enough to sit down with me separately to discuss it. As you'll see in that blog post, I was busily trying to connect their description with the analysis I had just completed for my 2008 book Network and my subsequent thoughts about how to manage projects in distributed workspaces.

I decided to study how Conjunctured worked, so I developed and submitted an IRB proposal, then waited for it to cycle through as I conducted my Semoptco study (heavily influenced by the same themes). By the time I was able to formally interview the Conjunctured principals in early 2009, another space had begun offering coworking (Soma Vida). And by the time I interviewed them, other spaces had announced their intention to open. Eventually, in early 2011, I had to stop visiting coworking spaces and just write the article.

If you're interested in the different spaces, see the coworking tag, where I profiled each space. More on that below.

The Research Methodology
At the time I began my coworking study, I had just finished my chapter in Amy Kimme Hea's collection Going Wireless, in which I argued that researchers must bring participants more consciously into the research process as a matter of self-protection. Traditional qualitative research approaches assume that the researcher is the only one with publishing power, so s/he has traditionally been encouraged to conduct member checks to give some measure of power and self-representation back to the participants. But this is 2012, and many of my participants have publishing power too—they have far more social media followers than I have readers. In this environment, fairly representing participants isn't just a matter of being nice, it's critical.

So as I began investigating coworking spaces, I used several avenues to make sure that I represented coworking proprietors fairly, starting with the space profiles I posted to my blog (which functioned as a trust-building measure in addition to a preliminary examination of each site). I also conducted member checks. Additionally, I leveraged their public social media, such as their spaces' Facebook pages and Yelp profiles—a lifesaver, since coworkers, with their irregular schedules, are difficult to consistently observe.

Given that this study was mostly based on proprietors' and coworkers' statements (in interviews, in collateral, in social media) rather than observations, I had to frame my claims carefully. Throughout the article, I emphasize: this is what coworkers and proprietors say about their work.

The Composition
In previous studies, I've tried focusing on one workplace or a small set of workplaces. But with coworking, I had to examine a whole range of them. It turned out to be a complex management issue. How could I analyze these very different workspaces in a way that would make sense?

To attack the problem, I decided to go back to three basic elements of activity theory: the subject, the object, and the outcome. In the paper, these turned into research questions: Who coworks? What is coworking? Why do people cowork? And once I sorted these out, I was able to connect them quite easily with my coding scheme.

Of course, people open and work at coworking sites for very different reasons. In the first version I submitted to JBTC, I had trouble articulating how these divergent reasons added up to an activity theory analysis; one reviewer thought that the results seemed incoherent and wondered whether coworking was anything more than a label. In my revision, I was able to articulate how these apparent contradictions in the subject, object, and outcome represented two separate configurations of coworking: the "good neighbors" configuration and the "good partners" configuration. It was at this point that the work in "Learning by Expanding" really began to pay off and the theoretical contribution became useful.

The Result
So I'm pretty happy with the result. Coworking is an endlessly fascinating topic, but also somewhat amorphous and a constantly moving target. In this article, I think I've been able to sketch the phenomenon fairly well—although coworkers in places other than Austin might see key differences, and even Austinites might feel that this snapshot doesn't adequately reflect coworking in 2012. But it provides a starting place for understanding coworking as part of a larger movement toward distributed work and perhaps a way to examine and predict further work trends. It develops activity theory to better account for this sort of work. And it moves the ball on leveraging social media in qualitative research. I'm pretty happy with it, and I hope you will be too.

Was this "behind-the-scenes" account useful? Let me know in the comments.

Reading :: Flow

Flow
By Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi thinks that you're not reading enough—specifically, not reading enough poetry, which is like using a Nautilus for the mind. Neither are you memorizing enough things. Perhaps you should consider moving to a large city, since "the density of human contacts that great cities afford is like a soothing balm; people in such centers relish it even when the interactions it provides may be unpleasant or dangerous. ... Everyone feels more alive when surrounded by other people." That being said, perhaps you should be like Dorothy, who moved from the big city to an island in northern Minnesota and enjoys being alone for months on end.

In any case, you really should be playing sports instead of watching athletes in stadiums; making music rather than listening to "platinum records cut by millionaire musicians," making art rather than buying it; and act on your beliefs rather than watching actors.

Certainly you should not spend your time in saloons after work, socializing with work friends. Rather, you should be at home building an intricate rock garden, like Joe. Joe is having fun the right way.

Perhaps I come across too harshly here, but I've pulled out actual examples from this perplexing book to make a point.

In this popularization of his research, Csikszentmihalyi attempts to define what leads to lasting happiness in people's lives. He argues that people are happy when they achieve flow. "The solution is to gradually become free of societal rewards and learn how to substitute for them rewards that are under one's powers," he argues, learning to "enjoy and find meaning in the ongoing stream of experience, in the process of living itself." That is, we should become autotelic, i.e., internally rather than externally motivated. That involves focus. Most of us, Csikszentmihalyi says, tend to diffuse our attention in "desultory, random movements."

To achieve flow, Csikszentmihalyi says, we must look for experiences in which the challenges are at or slightly beyond our skills. If that balance isn't achieved, we become bored (if skills exceed challenges) or anxious (if challenges exceed skills). We can achieve flow through seeking the right challenges and jobs, or even simply by gamifying routine tasks.

Csikszentmihalyi goes further, arguing that flow is the solution to the problems of cultural relativism. Is one culture better than another? Certainly: "If we assume, however, that the desire to achieve optimal experience [i.e., flow] is the foremost goal of every human being, the difficulties of interpretation raised by cultural relativism become less severe. Each social system can then be evaluated in terms of how much psychic entropy it causes, measuring that disorder not with reference to the ideal order of one or another belief system, but with reference to the goals of the members of that society." The more a society promotes flow, the better it is—according to Csikszentmihalyi.

As the alert reader has intuited, this move pushes the question back rather than answering it. Is the city more conducive to flow than the remote island in Minnesota? Is the POW camp more conducive than the factory? Should we pity Joe's coworkers, who think they are having fun socializing, when they really should be toiling on their own plots after work assembling rock gardens? And given that Csikszentmihalyi's interviewees found flow experiences in even the harshest conditions, how much guidance can we take from Csikszentmihalyi's many bromides, seemingly ripped from the pages of Reader's Digest? Is the key to flow, as Csikszentmihalyi sometimes seems to say, really based on living in the city, memorizing Homer, learning a musical instrument, reading poetry, and watching less TV? Is the notion of flow really reducible to this stream of moralistic finger-wagging? If so, aren't there more comprehensive books out there?

TIMN in 20 minutes

I've been intrigued by David Ronfeldt's formulation of Tribes, Institutions, Markets, and Networks (TIMN) for a while. See my reviews of his work:

• "In search of how societies work"
• The Zapatista Social Netwar in Mexico
• In Athena's Camp
• Networks and Netwars
• "Swarming and the Future of Conflict"

And see some posts that I've written referring to Ronfeldt's work on TIMN and networks:

• About those health care bill town halls
• TIMN and Bobbitt's market-state
• Some tentative thoughts about a networked rhetoric
• "Does TIMN imply developing the so-far least favored (+N?) option: networked non-profit cooperatives?"

Ronfeldt has now put together a 20-minute video in which he introduces, discusses, and applies the TIMN framework. It's fascinating, and I highly recommend it. If you're interested in examining organizational forms and social evolution, especially if you've been influenced by people such as Manuel Castells, take a look. 

Genre 2012...

... is approaching fast. It's June 26-29 at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

It should be a great conference full of cutting edge genre research. I'll be presenting a paper and participating in a roundtable. If you're there, swing by and see me.

Reading :: A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term

A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term
By Bronislaw Malinowski

Bronislaw Malinowski was a Polish ethnographer who visited New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands in 1914-1915 and 1917-1918, writing several classics, such as the fascinating Argonauts of the Western Pacific. In my review of that book, I praised Argonauts for being even-handed, generally examining the islanders' customs without condemnation or condescension.

During these trips, Malinowski kept a polyglot diary, mostly in Polish, in which he recorded his doubts, obsessions, hypochondria, paranoia, and bigotry. This diary was meant to be private, but when Malinowski died of a heart attack in 1942, his private papers were gathered and sent to his widow Valetta.  She discovered the diaries in 1949, discussed publication in 1960, and finally had it published in 1966.

How to put this? The diary underlines how large an accomplishment Malinowski's even-handedness actually was. Malinowski describes his hatred and contempt for the islanders, repeatedly using a racial slur that we in the 21st century find painful to read. Early on, he tells his diary, "On the whole my feelings toward the natives are decidedly tending to 'Exterminate the brutes'" (p.69), and these feelings are repeated throughout the rest of the diary. Malinowski's hatred and contempt are contradicted—or, perhaps, exacerbated—by his shameful lust for the native women. Not that Malinowski's lust is discriminate: he obsessively details it and its many objects.

Malinowski also details his own obsessive suspicions of others. He suspects many of his native informants of lying; he alternately adores, then reviles other ethnographers; he excoriates the missionaries.

When I began noticing these patterns, I thought, perhaps this is just the result of a very young man making his way through the world. But then I checked the dates: At the beginning of the diary, Malinowski is 30!

This obsessive hypochondriac, pouring his bigotry and shame onto the page of his private diary, was able to work through these issues to produce a sympathetic and evenhanded portrayal of the Trobriand Islanders. Remarkable!

If you're interested in the inner life of ethnographers, I'm not sure I would recommend this book first; perhaps Rabinow would be a better place to start. But if you want to learn more about Malinowski in particular, this diary is an interesting read.

SIGDOC 2012 is now accepting papers!

I hope you've been working on your SIGDOC 2012 research papers, experience reports, and posters, because the submission system is now open.

Remember, papers must be in ACM format. See the call for papers for more information on each type, along with downloadable templates.

Questions? Contact me. I hope to see your submission soon!

Reading :: The Transformation of Learning

The Transformation of Learning: Advances in Cultural-Historical Activity Theory
Edited by Bert van Oers, Wim Wardekker, Ed Elbers, and René van der Veer 

Our library got this book a while back, but unfortunately it's in that awful electronic format that you can only read in a full-fledged desktop browser. So I went ahead and bought the Kindle version. It was a good purchase - even though it's a collection (and I usually don't like collections that much), even though it's focused on education (not a research subject that typically appeals to me).

So what's good about it?

For me, the standout essay was Rene van der Veer's "Multiple Readings of Vygotsky." Here, van der Veer cautions us to see the limitations of Vygotsky's work as well as ways to contextualize it with later work. In particular, van der Veer recreates Leont'ev's famous experiment known as the Forbidden Colors Task (performed as part of Leont'ev's dissertation work under Vygotsky's supervision). In this experiment, people of various ages were asked to play a game in which they answered several questions with names of colors. They could use each color name only once, and two colors were forbidden outright. In one round, Leont'ev had them play the game without help; in another, he gave them a set of colored cards. Famously, Leont'ev noted that older children and adults used the cards as mediational means: they tended to flip the cards over to remind them which colors were no longer permitted. Individuals who used cards as mediational means tended to do better at the game.

Although this study has often been cited, van der Veer points out, it apparently has never been replicated. So van der Veer replicated it - and got some surprising findings: "more card use does not correlate with higher performance." Van der Veer draws on much more recent developmental research to demonstrate that, contra Leont'ev's assumptions, children learn to use cultural instruments quite early. The double stimulation method is still valuable, van der Veer tells us, but we must be cautious in interpreting its results.

Harmut Geist's chapter "The Formation Experiment in the Age of Hypermedia and Distance Learning" was similarly valuable. Geist distinguishes between the empiric-analytical paradigm common in the sciences and the causal-genetic method used in activity theory, cautioning us that without an understanding of their differences, we might switch between the two, making a hash of theory and analysis. Why? Geist explains:

Looking at the history of science, we find two different roots and basic ideas in scientific thinking: the idea and concept of evolution sensu Darwin, and the idea and concept of activity sensu Marx. The basic difference between the two ideas concerns the relation between human being and environment: Darwin pointed to "adaptation to the environment" as a basic idea, whereas Marx referred to "the adaptation of the environment." Basic to and pioneering for modern thinking was Darwin's idea that the existing living world was not created according to some plan or organized by an idea existing beforehand but evolved as an effect of the interdependence between environment and living beings. The feature that can explain it all is the ability of living beings to bring themselves more or less actively in line with the environment. The fitting into the environment explains the developmental potential of a living being - the survival of the fittest. This idea was fascinating and explained the evolution from the variety of life up to the development of the human being by self-organization. No ideas or principles or order-organizing rules were needed that come from outside. ... it was now possible to investigate humans using the methods of science.

In contrast,

The dialectical analysis of human history, as it was done, for example, by Hegel and particularly by Marx, showed not only that humans adapt to the environment but also that they change it in accordance with their demands (from agriculture, the use of fire, the construction of houses, to the manipulation of genes). Activity is not an active adaptation ot the environment but the transformation of the environment and - in interrelation with it - of humans themselves. 

Geist locates the difference between constructivism and activity theory here:

Activity in the view of constructivism means the humans' active adaptation to the environment. Simply put:  things are such that we cannot change them; therefore we must come to terms with them and adapt to the conditions of nature and society. Activity in the context of activity theory means active adaptation (change due to activity) of the environment to the humans' needs. Or, in simple terms: the environmental conditions are not suitable, so let us change them in order to be able to lead a better life and to cope better with the demands of life.

Geist concludes that researchers working in each tradition will necessarily adapt different research programs and methods, then illustrates by comparing a classical experiment with an investigation based on the causal-genetic method.

Other chapters are similarly solid, but these two stood out to me, and I believe they're worth the price of admission. If you're interested in activity theory, and if you have a fairly solid grounding in how it's been deployed developmentally, take a look.

Reading :: Driving Results through Social Networks

Driving Results Through Social Networks: How Top Organizations Leverage Networks for Performance and Growth
By Rob Cross and Robert J. Thomas

Rob Cross is well known for his work in organizational network analysis (ONA). In this book, Cross and his coauthor Robert Thomas discuss how ONA can be applied to better understand organizations' information flow, innovation, decision-making, and performance. It's an impressive description of how a careful ONA can turn up what are typically invisible connections, hubs, and gaps in a company. As the authors state, "ONA provides leaders with the means to accomplish what is arguably their most critical function: aligning individual and collective action with strategic objectives." They illustrate this point with multiple examples from extended cases.

As an illustration of the benefits of ONA, the book is successful; executives with no ONA background can see how this approach can translate directly into greater insights, leading to better-guided adaptations. In fact, the book would work well in terms of getting organizations excited about this approach and (more to the point) about taking seminars to learn how to perform an ONA.

Unfortunately, the book is not an ONA how-to. It focuses on benefits and insights, but for information on how to perform the ONA itself, you'll need to read other books. If you've wondered what ONA could contribute to your organization, this book is the place to start; if you want to know how it's conducted, I recommend a more academically oriented book such as a collection Cross coedited earlier, Networks in the Knowledge Economy.

Come hear me speak at Austin STC next week

In Austin? Tired of going to outstanding restaurants, hearing live music, visiting vintage stores, and walking around Ladybird Lake? Try something a little different: Come hear me speak at next week's Austin STC meeting.

As the item says, I'll be talking about how knowledge work is impacting writing in organizations - particularly how "non-writers" are writing. We'll also talk about agriculture, industry, the recent Texas governor's race, and Disneyland.

In Austin? Sign up for my business proposals seminar.

On June 8, I'll be teaching a daylong seminar on writing persuasive business proposals. This seminar will involve learning a lot, but I'll also be deploying my trademark humor. You probably won't want to leave at the end of it.

Here's the description:

How do business proposals work, and how can they work better?

In this seminar, attendees will examine business proposals as persuasive arguments: they will take these proposals apart, examine their underlying components, and learn how to put them back together in ways that make them more effective. Using a proven methodology for developing these types of documents, attendees will generate basic proposal arguments to address a case study. This case study will allow students, working in small groups, to identify the problem presented in the case study; generate components of the proposal; analyze stakeholder dynamics; tie these complex elements together into a coherent, easily comprehensible argument; and outline a proposal based on this groundwork. Finally, the class will workshop applications to actual cases that attendees bring in.
After this seminar, attendees will be able to:

• Understand basic proposal structure and logic.

• Identify basic proposal sections and understand how they work together.

• Clarify and identify objectives.

• Develop a methodology for reaching the objective.

• Perform audience analysis by identifying stakeholders, investigating their concerns, and weighting criteria accordingly.

• Connect your team’s qualifications with the specific requirements implied in the situation and methodology.

• Develop structured benefits that address the situation.

• Tie these complex elements into a coherent argument.

• Learn how to rework an ill-defined problem into an effective proposal.

• Pour all this information into a basic proposal format.

The proposal-writing methodology used in this seminar was developed for large consulting agencies, but it can also apply to other sorts of proposals and reports in a variety of organizations.

Download "Losing by Expanding" for free

The editor of the Journal of Business and Technical Communication has just informed me that my October 2011 article "Losing by Expanding" is available for free on the JBTC website through June. I'm really delighted. If you have any interest in activity theory, please do check it out. Here's the abstract:

Losing by Expanding: Corralling the Runaway Object
Clay Spinuzzi 

Abstract
Third-generation activity theory (3GAT) has become a popular theoretical and methodological framework for writing studies, particularly in technical communication. 3GAT involves identifying an object, a material or problem that is cyclically transformed by collective activity. The object is the linchpin of analysis in the empirical case. Yet the notion of object has expanded methodologically and theoretically over time, making it difficult to reliably bound an empirical case. In response, this article outlines the expansion of the object, diagnoses this expansion, and proposes an alternate approach that constrains the object for case-study research in writing studies.

Take a look and see what you think. And while you're at it, check out JBTC's latest two award-winning articles. Both (by Artemeva & Fox and by Swarts) are fantastic.

SIGDOC 2012 posters

I hope you're strongly considering submitting a paper to SIGDOC 2012. (Paper deadlines are June 1.) But I also hope you'll help us spread the word. One way would be to share this picture with interested colleagues. Post it to Facebook, print it out and put it on your door, anything you can do to let everyone know about this great conference.

Questions? Contact us through the website. Or in the comments here. Hope to see you in Seattle!

Reading :: Net Smart

Net Smart
By Howard Rheingold

Howard Rheingold is known for books investigating how technology changes communities, books such as Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution and The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. But his latest book, Net Smart, is not an investigation. Think of it instead as a handbook for being a successful member of such communities.

Net Smart is a light book, and much of it will sound familiar or even obvious to those who have closely followed his previous work. That's okay. Rheingold says that this book is for a range of people, including adults who are online but are having trouble managing their time and attention; intelligent but fearful parents of children who are going online; young people who enjoy being online but want to interact in deeper ways; older people who are puzzled by new media; businesspeople who want their employees to be net smart; and educators who want their students to connect old and new literacies. In other words, if you've been attending South by Southwest Interactive or working on your MA in media theory, this might not be the book for you.

On the other hand, it might. Even though Rheingold writes simply for this broad set of audiences, his long and deep experience with online communities has given him keen insights that others may not have. Rheingold covers several lessons, including:

• Controlling and being mindful of our scarcest resource: our attention.
• Critically examining and testing assertions (a.k.a "crap detection").
• Recognizing and developing participation skills for participatory culture.
• Understanding collective intelligence and crowdsourcing.
• Understanding social networks and social network analysis.

And although the book is for a general audience, it's easy to see that it's based on deep experience. Personally, I found myself highlighting references to more scholarly texts such as texts on social network analysis.

In sum, Net Smart is a well written and timely book. You may find it useful for yourself. But if you already consider yourself "net smart," consider giving a copy to someone who could use it.

Ryerson University

I'm in the Toronto airport waiting for my flight back to Austin. Toronto's a great city, about the size—and vibe—of Chicago. Downtown, among other things, is Ryerson University, where I spoke yesterday.

Ryerson is a polytechnic university. Among other things, it has a relatively new Master's program in professional communication. It's a one-year terminal MA for fast trackers, and it looks fascinating—and not at all conventional. The standout sight for me was the posters that students produced in a theory course: each poster graphically mapped out relationships among theories, and each was beautifully, professionally produced. Judging from the students' work, and from the students' questions during the presentation, this is a unique program in the best sense.

I've long been a fan of the work of Catherine Schryer, who is now the chair of the School of Professional Communication at Ryerson, so when she invited me to speak at Ryerson, I jumped at the chance. I'm really glad that I did.

Thanks to all the faculty and students who came to hear me talk about genre theory, Castells, Latour, spambots, hipsters, Galileo, SEO, Pokemon, shuttle buses, and cardiologists. (It was a wide-ranging discussion.) And thanks especially to Isabel Pedersen, who served as my liaison throughout the day. I hope the visit was as valuable for you as it was for me!

Symmetry as a methodological move, Part II

We've been discussing the oft-misunderstood principle of symmetry in actor-network theory. Last time I emphasized that symmetry is a methodological stance meant to get at certain things and not others–not wholesale anthropomorphization. Let's pursue that line further by performing a thought experiment. I emphasize that this is just a thought experiment for reasons that will become clear below.

Aristotle believed and taught that heavy objects fall faster than light ones, in direct proportion to their weight. Galileo disagreed, and described a classic experiment in which he stood at the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa with two balls, dropped them, and they hit the ground at about the same time. (It's unclear whether Galileo actually performed the experiment.)

Suppose you want to perform a similar experiment. Since I'm at the University of Texas campus, let's imagine that you ascend UT's Tower to the observation deck. You bring a one-pound weight and a ten-pound weight.

Photo © 1980 Larry D. Moore (CC-BY-SA), available  at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uttower1.jpg

(NOTE: You can only do this as a thought experiment. The observation deck is inaccessible except during guided tours due to a tragic incident. Also, dropping weights from the observation deck is a misdemeanor. Obviously, I do not endorse actually performing this experiment.)

Leaning over the railing, you drop the two weights at the same time. Not surprisingly, you discover that Galileo was right and Aristotle was wrong. The ten-pound weight does not fall ten times faster than the one-pound weight; they hit the ground at roughly the same time.

Interesting, you think. And then you decide to try a second variation of the experiment. You ascend the tower again, this time with a one-pound weight, a ten-pound weight, and a 150-pound hipster.

(NOTE: Again, you can only do this as a thought experiment for obvious legal, moral, and ethical reasons.)

When you reach the observation deck, you repeat the experiment, this time dropping all three objects at the same time. It turns out that no matter how ironically the hipster falls, in terms of gravity, he behaves exactly as the other weights do. For the purposes of the experiment, the hipster is exactly the same as the other two weights; you treat them symmetrically, and so does gravity.

But when you descend the elevator to the bottom of the tower, you discover that what is treated as symmetrical in one network of meaning is not treated as symmetrical in other networks. Dropping the weights is a misdemeanor. Dropping the hipster is a felony. The law of gravity treats them as symmetrical, but state and federal law do not.

When Latour describes humans and nonhumans as symmetrical, he means that differences among actants (both human and nonhuman) are generated within a given actor-network rather than preexisting them; we can't presuppose those differences. Consider Galileo's experiment as well as the previous illustration of elevator capacity: in these narrowly defined situations, humans and nonhumans act in exactly the same way. (If the tower experiment were a physics problem, you wouldn't even specify the materials, you'd just plug in the weight values.) But of course these networks of meaning are always entangled with other networks, as they should be. There are many good reasons why you would never actually perform this experiment, and they go beyond trouble with the law to basic questions of empathy and morality, questions that apply to all people,  few if any artifacts, and to some extent to nonhuman animals. 

But Latour talks about situations in which people are actually interacting: scientists, technologists, the public. Aren't these social rather than technical? And in social situations, don't we have to treat humans and nonhumans differently? 

The answer is: it depends on your methodological aims. Even in terms that we consider very human–cognition and persuasion–it sometimes makes sense to take a symmetrical viewpoint in one's methods. We'll see an example in the next post in this series.

Symmetry as a methodological move, part I

"This circulating gene entangles patients and researchers as it goes along. ... we see that the gene is domesticated, tamed, and integrated into a collective that holds it and is held by it. It is a civilized and civilizing gene, performing the collective and performed by it. And this integration into the society of the gene, or insertion into the genetics of society, would have been impossible without a starting point: the parity, the symmetry, between the complementary forms of knowledge that constitutes the foundations of this collective." (Callon & Rabeharisoa 2003, p.201)

This quote from a recent class echoes through your head as you walk down Austin's 6th Street on a beautiful spring day. Callon & Rabeharisoa are talking about a collaboration between research scientists and the French Muscular Dystrophy Association, which was clear enough, but in the latter half of the paper they make this assertion, consistent with the principle of symmetry that actor-network theory embraces.

Symmetry seems ridiculous to you. What's the point of pretending that genes, stars, and rat kidneys are actors in the sense that people are? Why apply the same language to both? Maybe this is one of those "critical theory" moves you've heard people talking about. To you, it seems more like attention-seeking. Latour likes to say that symmetrical language is not metaphorical but that he isn't engaging in anthropomorphism either. Obviously he's trying to have it both ways.

Enough. It's spring break. South by Southwest Interactive is winding down, but South by Southwest Music is just ramping up. You walk past the back of a club, where roadies are struggling to move a ton of sound equipment. It's going to be an exclusive show, evidently, because fourteen undernourished hipsters have already lined up at the front of the club; they're thumbing their iPhones and checking out each others' ironic t-shirts. A little farther on, seven well-nourished tourists on Segways ride along the sidewalk in a neat line, like ducks. And as you pass Jim-Jim's Water Ice, you see a mounted policeman on one horse, holding another horse's reins. The other policeman is in line getting a snow cone. Ah, Austin.

But you don't have time to enjoy the scenes. You hurry on toward the Driskill Hotel, where a temporary job awaits you. When you get there, you find out that the job is pretty easy.

"See this elevator?" your supervisor asks. "It's old. It has a maximum capacity of 2000 pounds. Max. But people try to overload it all the time. Your job is to make sure they don't." He turns on his heel and walks away.

Easy, you think. But then you wonder: about how much is 2000 pounds?

Let's see, you reason to yourself. Two thousand pounds is a ton. Like a ton of stereo equipment, you think whimsically, remembering your walk.

But how many people? Maybe thirteen or fourteen people - like those fourteen undernourished hipsters in front of the club. Or seven well-fed tourists on Segways, you think, imagining the line riding into the elevator. Or two horses and a police officer. Any of these combinations would come out to about 2000 pounds. You resolve that whatever combination of humans and nonhumans might come through the door, if they are above 2000 pounds, they can't ride together.

Humans and nonhumans? You laugh a little, thinking back to the notion of symmetry. What if the hipsters argued: "But we're not horses! Hello? Do horses have an encyclopedic knowledge of craft brews? Did horses listen to Mumford and Sons long before they were cool? Do horses have iPhones? Of course not! Horses don't even have thumbs!"And you imagine yourself retorting: "Maybe that matters if you're trying to get backstage. But not here. All that matters is how much you weigh."

You don't believe for a minute that hipsters are the "same" as horses, that stereo equipment is the same as overfed tourists, or that policemen are the same as Segways. But for the purposes of your job, they are judged by exactly the same criteria. Four hours later, it occurs to you that you are indeed performing a kind of symmetric analysis.

More than that: If you don't, the elevator will.

Reading :: The Exploit

The Exploit: A Theory of Networks
By Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker

Note: I reviewed the Kindle version, so I don't include page numbers.


The Exploit: A Theory of Networks seeks to develop an ontology of networks. The authors attempt to build this ontology from at least three very different traditions of networks - but unfortunately, rather than putting these traditions into dialogue, they conflate the traditions' definitions of networks. Since these definitions and their applications are so different, The Exploit becomes incoherent in places. In my judgment, it does not reach its goal of developing an ontology of networks.

To understand what went wrong, let's look at three distinct ways that the term network is used in the literature. (See Milton Mueller's excellent book Networks and States for more on how the term is used in different ways.)

In network analysis, a network is a set of nodes (units) connected by links or edges. Since this is a form of analysis, anything can be considered a node - an academic paper (linked via citations), a set of phones (linked by wires and switches), a group of people (linked by communication lines), you name it. As long as the units are consistent and the links are identifiable, you can perform a network analysis. That doesn't mean that the phenomenon you're studying is a network in an objective sense. For instance, you could study a hierarchical organization via a network analysis - and many people do - even though the hierarchical organization is not considered to be a network per se. Network analysis typically involves mathematical tools. (See Barabasi.)

In contrast, networked organizations are a phenomenon rather than a method of analysis. In this tradition, networks are a distinct organizational form, demonstrably and qualitatively different from other organizational forms such as tribes, hierarchical institutions, and markets. In networked organizations, control and discretion are typically decentralized (pushed to the individual level of the organization), although command may still be centralized. Networked organizations are often studied qualitatively. As a phenomenon, networked organizations are networked organizations no matter what analysis you apply. (For instance, al Qaeda is considered a networked organization; but the US Army in World War II was an entirely different kind of organization, a hierarchical one.) For examples, see Ronfeldt; Arquilla & Ronfeldt; Castells; and Toffler, who Ronfeldt cites as a strong influence.

A third construct, sociotechnical networks, is again an analytical frame rather than a phenomenon per se. In this tradition, theorists analyze the social and technical as an inseparable unit made up of varying other units (which could include humans, animals, tools, activities, concepts, etc.). One early example is Bateson's example of the blind-man-with-cane, in which he invites us to consider how the blind man taps his cane to navigate. By himself, he can't; with the cane, he can feel the curb, even though he's not touching it. The system of man-cane-curb is a sensory system in a way that the individual elements are not. This networked understanding of sociotechnical systems is used in somewhat different ways by Deleuze & Guattari, Latour, Engestrom, and others; I wrote a book about it. 

So: at least three kinds of networks and thus three different understandings of what the term network means. Two are analyses, one is a phenomenon. Two are largely qualitative, one is quantitative. Two involve fixed units (in social systems, these are people); one doesn't. They're bound together by the metaphor of network but little more.

Unfortunately, The Exploit doesn't acknowledge or even seem to realize the deep differences among these. I actually gasped out loud when I realized that they had read Arquilla and Ronfeldt's work on networked organizations, but missed how A&R carefully separated this phenomenon from network analysis. Indeed, they soon conflate Arquilla and Ronfeldt's networked organizations with Barabasi's work on "heterogeneous systems, be they terrorism, AIDS, or the Internet." And a couple of paragraphs later, they ask: "what is the principle of political organization that stitches a network together?" - a question that is unanswerable as long as the senses of network are still conflated. Incredibly, late in the book, they claim that Arquilla & Ronfeldt's notion of netwar is grounded in graph theory - despite the fact that A&R don't employ mathematical analysis!

The authors similarly deploy terms from network analysis in ways that seem inconsistent with it. For instance, in discussing SARS and bioterrorism, they claim, "Such skirmishes highlight an important point in our understanding of networks: That the networks of emerging infectious diseases and bioterrorism are networks composed of several subnetworks" such as the genome, epidemiological networks, knowledge networks, and pharmaceutical networks. But they don't explain the units and links of these subnetworks, nor how they qualify as subnetworks of a larger network (as opposed to, say, interfering networks). 

The authors do seem to hew closer to a sociotechnical understanding of networks in some places, particularly when they discuss Deleuze, Negri, and others in this line. Shockingly, although the authors mention Latour near the end of the book, they actually don't mention actor-network theory, nor do they correctly represent Latour's discussion of symmetry in their discussion of it: 

Yet despite Latour's emphasis on the way that human actors are influenced by nonhuman actants, there is a sense in which the nonhuman is still anthropomorphized, a sense in which the circumference of the human is simply expanded.

The principle of symmetry - the stance in which Latour applies the same terms and concepts to humans and nonhumans - the reason why he is constantly having to explain that he doesn't actually have conversation with lampposts - and the authors think that they just might possibly detect a hint of anthropomorphism. And that seems like as good a place as any to conclude this review.

Reading :: The Origins of Writing

The Origins of Writing
Edited by Wayne M. Senner

I read this 1989 edited collection over the winter break, but have been buried under other duties, so I haven't been able to give it its due. That's a shame, because it's an enjoyable book, with a variety of pieces including a chapter by Denise Schmandt-Besserat. The collection covers Sumerian tokens, early cuneiform, Egyptian heiroglyphics, the development of the Phonecian, Arabic, and Latin alphabets, runes and Celtic scripts, Chinese and Mesoamerican writing.

With this broad sweep, the collection ends up alighting briefly on different forms of writing. That means that readers get a sampling of these different writing systems and (sometimes) a sense of how they interact. But it also means that we don't get a sustained argument of how writing developed and spread.

Nevertheless, we see some interesting connections. In his chapter on the invention and development of the alphabet, for instance, Frank Moore Cross argues that the alphabet was invented only once (p.77). Nevertheless, five major, independent systems developed in the ancient Near East (p.77). Despite the mystic rumors swirling around runes, Elmer Antonsen compellingly argues in his chapter that these developed from the Latin alphabet, but adapted both for language and for the Germanic tendency to cut letters into wood: "the runic shapes avoid curves and horizontal lines, changing them to angles and oblique lines" because in wood "it is difficult to execute curves, and horizontal lines would tend to be obscured by the grain of the wood" (p.144).

These chapters, and the others, tell us fascinating things about how the diverse set of writing systems - some of which bear very little resemblance to each other - developed and interacted. If you're interested in the history for writing, check it out.

Reading :: Cross-Cultural Technology Design

Cross-Cultural Technology Design: Creating Culture-Sensitive Technology for Local Users
By Huatong Sun

I've been a fan of Huatong Sun's work ever since I read her award-winning dissertation a few years ago. That dissertation synthesized activity theory, genre theory, and British cultural studies to examine how people use SMS (texting) in US and Chinese contexts. It was timely.

So is this book, which is based on the dissertation but expands into subsequent studies of locally used technology. Sun argues that to design technology for local users, we must better understand local technology adaptation and meaning-making. That doesn't mean simply examining big-C "Culture" according to basic precepts or characteristics; it means examining how users themselves interpret, localize, and integrate technologies. How do practitioners and designers "develop an effective approach to design appropriately localized products that meet the cultural expectations of local users, support their complex activities in concrete contexts, empower their agency, and mediate their identities" (p.xiv)? Sun's answer is "the design philosophy and model of Culturally Localized User Experience (CLUE), which integrates action and meaning throughout the cyclical design process in order to make a technology both usable and meaningful to local users" (pp.xiv-xv). She illustrates its principles through studies of text messaging - "a technology that is poorly localized at the developers' site but is then rescued by users' localization efforts" (p.xv).

Sun brilliantly draws on specific, well grounded examples of text messaging to illustrate her principles, avoiding the essentialism that too often characterizes examinations of cross-cultural communication. She doesn't make her story a contrast of US and Chinese use, but rather a contrast in how locally grounded individuals perceive and use the same technologies in different contexts. In doing so, she illustrates the

seven defining features of the CLUE framework:

1. The CLUE approach highlights the praxis of use.
2. Local culture constitutes the dynamic nexus of contextual interactions and manifests numerous articulations of practices and meanings.
3. User experience is both situated and constructed.
4. Technology use is a dual mediation process.
5. Structured affordance comes from dialogic interactions.
6. Culturally localized user experience respects use practices of individual local users and values their efforts at user localization.
7. Design is both problem solving and engaged conversation. (pp.233-234)

Sun illustrates each feature well through sensitive, compellingly told stories interspersed with data. And although the sweep of theory is broad, through these stories she manages to make it understandable, applicable, and convincing. 

Full disclosure: Huatong and I discussed this book project as she planned it, and I encouraged her to develop it and send it to a top-notch press. If you want to see why, just pick up a copy. It's solid work, and recommended reading for anyone interested in technology design, technology localization, and related issues.

Full disclosure 2: Forgot to mention that I received a free copy of the book. It's worth list price.

Synthesis Lectures on Human-Computer Informatics

Interested in HCI? Of course you are. So take a look at this Morgan & Claypool series edited by John M. Carroll. Each entry is a small monograph on an HCI topic. They're all blind reviewed. Currently they seem to be priced at $20 a pop, which I think is quite reasonable for these compressed, focused monographs.

Most interesting for me is the upcoming Kaptelinin and Nardi monograph, "Activity Theory: A Primer for HCI Research." I was privileged to review the manuscript. It's a great, compressed discussion of AT and how it relates to HCI - and an efficient, focused text that makes a great introduction to AT in general.